April 7, 2015

EVEN THE OPPONENTS SUPPORT IT:

The preliminary nuclear deal announced on Thursday in Switzerland means that Obama may very well succeed in keeping his promise to Israel. Iran, it appears, will not gain possession of a nuclear weapon while he is president. If Iran adheres to the terms of the deal, as best as we understand those sketchy terms today, it will not have a nuclear weapon during the terms of the next one or two U.S. presidents. However, this deal, should it actually be ratified in June, formalizes Iran's status as an eventual nuclear-threshold state by allowing it to maintain a vast nuclear infrastructure. This was not part of the international community's original plan, and it is a cause for worry.

I've been reading many of the early analyses of this deal, and I agree with the commentators who argue that the United States and its partners in the "P5+1" group of world powers actually succeeded in extracting significant concessions from the Iranians. Opponents of the Iranian nuclear program should be pleased to see in the preliminary deal limitations on the number of centrifuges Iran is allowed to operate; they should be pleased to learn about the level and intensity of outside inspection of Iran's nuclear facilities; they should also be provisionally pleased to learn, contra statements from the Iranian foreign minister, that many sanctions will be lifted only in response to specific Iranian actions.